Want to Find Flow? Head to Your Nearest Toy Store

I’m one of those people who picks a new word to guide their year.  It’s a practice meant to distill down all the year's hopes, dreams, and resolutions.  It makes it easy to return to what I’ve decided matters when things start going sideways (as they always will).  For 2023, it was “abundance.”  I launched my coaching business, Burning Bright MD, at the end of 2022, and I wanted 2023 to be the year that it grew so I could help all the people I knew were struggling with burnout.  Then, things went sideways early in the year, and the abundance I felt about my business shifted to processing an abundance of emotions.  And when I came out of that acute time, I felt myself striving for an abundance of being generous, having patience, and showing love.  “Abundance” didn’t end up serving me as I thought it would in 2023, but it ended up serving me in deeper and more meaningful ways. 

So, while I was marinating on my “To Be” goals (here’s the link to that post if you missed it: www.burningbrightmd.com/blog/from-to-do-lists-to-to-be-lists-a-new-approach-to-goal-setting-for-2024), I was slightly aware that I also wanted to pick a word to live my year by.  It came to me, as these things do, when I stopped deliberately thinking about it.  My word for 2024 would be “flow.”  Positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as a state in which focus is so intense that it “leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity,” such that the rest of our consciousness is stripped away.  During a flow state, our nervous system is processing so pieces information that we lose our ability to feel our bodies or the passage of time.  (For a fantastic 18-minute and 37-second primer on flow, go here: https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness/transcript?language=en).  Do you know when my word for 2024 came to me?  When I was so absorbed in something that I had lost my ability to feel the passage of time?  When I was building a Lego.

Buying Legos for myself is one of my top five favorite things about being a DINK (Double Income, No Kids for the uninitiated).  I loved them when I was little, got away from them when I was going through training (time- and cash-strapped as we all are during that time), and then was re-introduced to them a few years ago.  My dad had sent my husband, Mo, and me some for Christmas because, in his own words, “Every kid should get a toy at Christmas.”  Yes, I was 35 years old, but I was still his kid.  Mo actually put his set together first, weeks after Christmas, and surprised me with it when I got home from work.  I was so happy to see him so amused that I got mine out to put together.  It was just a little set, and it only took me a few minutes to complete, but the sense of accomplishment was something I hadn’t felt in the longest time.  I started building bigger and bigger sets.  They now decorate our house.  On the surface, it seems a (literally) childish pastime.  But I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity of it.  Legos don’t ask us for anything, and they certainly will still be around even if we ignore them for days.  Patients can’t do that.  Spouses and family may be able to do that for a time.  Children and pets can’t.  Building a Lego pushes me to use my imagination, ingenuity, and sometimes stubborn determination to solve a problem, but I know the problem is actually solvable.  I frequently encounter issues at work that do not have a good solution.  During those times, I know I’m not looking for the good solution to the problem; I’m looking for the least bad from among all the bad solutions to the problem because that’s just, unfortunately, the situation I find myself in with the patient.

Having a hobby where you can create flow allows you to find it elsewhere.  If you watch Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s YouTube video, approximately minute 13:45 has a seven-item description of flow states that shows why I can feel flow while running a code.  There are moments of flow during PICU rounds a few times a week.  Given that flow states are associated with happiness, finding where they already are in our day-to-day seems fruitful.  My choosing “flow” as my word for 2024 reminds me to catch moments of flow when they’re already happening and to create them whenever possible.  I’ve found I can create a flow state when tackling my email inbox by turning it into a game.  If I challenge myself to get from 53 emails to inbox zero in 20 minutes, I can typically get it done (and then get the dopamine hit associated with completing the task).  If I just meander my way through my inbox, stopping to distract myself with social media or ruminating on whether I’m wording a 2-sentence response email properly, it takes me hours to do a fraction of the work.  

Some people find flow in cooking.  Some in running or another form of exercise.  I don’t.  My reproducible state of flow comes in the form of brightly colored blocks that lock together with a satisfying snap.  In 2023, when things got difficult, I could ask myself, “Where’s the abundance?”  In 2024, I’ll be asking, “How can I create flow?”